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.What is the world’s biggest live thing? And no, we’re not counting things like the fungus population in eastern Oregon that is two miles wide.

Big sequoia trees, called the “god of the woods” by John Muir, deserve this honour. Sequoia National Park in California’s rough Sierra Nevada mountains is the best place to see them.

The park is about 225 miles (362 km) north of Los Angeles and covers 631 square miles. It has sharp hills, fields full of colourful wildflowers, valleys that drop thousands of feet, and marble caves. But the most famous thing about the park is the giant sequoia, a species that only grows naturally on the wet western side of the Sierra Nevada above 5,000 feet.